"It's a market, a so-called market, in the non-delivery of an invisible substance to no one," Tony Abbott said on Monday, answering his own rhetorical question about what a carbon trading scheme is.

Abbott's emission was received with glee on social media, where people pointed out that there are many "invisible substances" - natural gas, oxygen and bacteria spring to mind - that both have market value and are essential to life on Earth.

It's the latest in a long campaign to redefine the stuff that comes from burning coal as a "colourless, odourless gas", a harmless three-way cuddle between one carbon and two oxygen atoms that, happily, provides "plant food". But, while the "invisible substance" line is facile, it is worth examining a little more closely, because it contains a few hints about the opposition's strategy.

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The phrase "so-called market" not only plays to the sympathies of people suspicious of money markets, it positions the Coalition as the party with the knowledge to discern real markets from fake ones.

The "non-delivery" hints at Labor government unreliability, and the "no one" points to the ethereal nature of the carbon exchange mechanism, where permits have a set value for a set period of time, but become worthless after that, like unused movie tickets.

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The fact that you can't really make a non-delivery to no-one seems to have escaped Abbott, but the staffer who penned the line could argue the twisted grammar echoes the confusing nature of an ETS that won't actually reduce emissions for a few years.

Best of all, "invisible substance" plugs into a medieval mistrust of scientists and their incomprehensible powers. The sentence links these modern-day alchemists together with the shadowy financiers who would run the so-called markets, trading invisibility while we pay for it.

Or something. It suggests that Abbott is prepared to wear some public ridicule in exchange for speaking directly to that part of his supporter base that is unmoved by scientific evidence about global warming.

Never mind that the Coalition is proposing to spend about $10 billion of the public's money fighting an "invisible substance".

That can be hidden behind its earthy rhetoric of "direct action" and a "green army" getting its hands dirty with a hard day's practical work.

What the Coalition is really trying to do is wrest back control of the language of climate change, because if it can control the language, and debate on its own terms, it can win.

The term "invisible substance" plugs into a medieval mistrust of scientists and their incomprehensible powers.